Issue Ten, this thirtieth day of May, 2003

'We're not in a crisis yet'

No apologies for the gap in communications. I'm allowed time off as much as the next man (who happens to be Stud Muffin, skiving again). Besides, sometimes I have to stand back and let the candle of inspiration stop flickering and burn more brightly.

It looks like we've been taking notice of Sauron - apparently this year we've been more expensive than he expected - not that we're in the same league as other labs - but the 'Lab doesn't care because we can cover it with the grant money'. Tie that in with needing to spend grant money because we're 'not spending enough' and you'll appreciate there is a little bit of confusion in your correspondent's tiny little mind.

So, in order to burn some cash, he asked what we thought about getting a new computer. I really don't know why he asks, because he went ahead and ordered a top of the range G4 Mac anyway, and - here's the killer, wait for it - it's not for us, it's for him! Unless it doesn't do what he wants in which case it'll replace Rosanna's Mac. I don't know why I bother caring.

Sauron got a little bit nervous when the possibility was raised last week of working with canine cDNA. 'Dogs are a little too close to humans', allegedly. Okay, so they're Man's best friend and all that, but frankly, it's been a long time since I felt the need to walk round my bed three times before flopping down into it and licking my own testicles.

But apart from that I got to tell Sauron that he was Wrong today. Go me! It was the old 'pick the small colonies' for maximal protein expression thing. Didn't achieve anything though - he Believes and therefore any contrary evidence can not, by definition, exist. Never mind that he's never done the proper experiment to test it, never mind that I have, twice; he yet believes that 'when we did it' the small colonies were best. Damnit man, all small colonies mean is that you've had a bad transformation.

I think I must have rattled him, though, because he retreated to a more (in his eyes) defendable position; that of using ammonium sulphate precipitation (how did you guess?) in cases where - get this - where we 'only have a few microgrammes per litre'. And it really worked, he was quite insistent about that.

Eh? Perhaps ex-members of the lab would care to tell me how this technique improved their purification methods. I am always willing to change my views in the face of contrary evidence.

New guy in the lab this week. He's of the ah, medical persuasion. Seems very bright but knows bugger all about doing science. Jury's still out on whether he'll make the grade - he's only been here 3 days, after all - but he seems very keen. I shall refer to him as The Doctor.

That's meant to be ironic, by the way.

So, dripping with sweet innocence, The Doctor says to Hippy yesterday,

'You have to know what everyone's doing because you're the lab manager?'

I think the uncontrollable mirth should have disabused him of any notion that Hippy knows what he's doing, let alone anyone else.

My very young apprentice had some excitement this week. One of the safety droids came to fetch him, which in itself was intriguing. Turns out that he'd been caught on CCTV aiding and abetting a bicycle thief. Seriously. Some scrote had asked him for 50p, then used the coin to pick a bicycle lock. All captured by the wonder of CCTV. Jazza, the Napoleon of crime. Naturally, we'd get an email warning us not to give money to strangers, you'd think. You'd think wrong. All we get is a vague message saying that we're being 'targetted'.

Oh well. I'm off to do a quickie.

Richard (- King Canute of proteolysis).